Fairfax Journalists Just Voted To Strike For A Week Over Job Cuts

The strike covers the federal budget next week.

Journalists from the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Australian Financial Review have voted to strike for a week, which includes coverage of next Tuesday's federal budget, in response to significant staff cuts announced by Fairfax management on Wednesday.

The latest round of redundancies, the specific details of which were announced on Wednesday, will see 125 full-time equivalent positions leave AFR, The Age and the Herald. Ten people have already taken a redundancy in the last month, meaning 115 more positions will be cut in total.

Union members of the company held stop-work meetings on Wednesday afternoon, where it was resolved that they would go out on a week-long strike. This period of industrial action will mean the three mastheads will not cover the federal budget in Canberra on May 9.

"What's at risk here is a one newspaper town in Sydney and Melbourne... where the only commercial media outlet you can turn to is a Murdoch media outlet, a virtual monopoly," said Herald state political editor Sean Nicholls outside the Fairfax building in Sydney, following the announcement.

"That's an appalling situation and threatens the pillars of democracy."

In a statement, a Fairfax Media spokesperson told HuffPost Australia the company was "disappointed" by the strike.

"We are disappointed in the decision by some of our masthead journalists to take unprotected industrial action for seven days after a month-long consultation period about necessary changes in our Metro Media business," the statement read.

"But it is not the first time we have had industrial action. As in the previous episodes, we will continue to publish across print and digital as usual."